UX experts have a passion for understanding human behavior

Research methods

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Talk will focus on qualitative research

None leading interviews are like a conversation

are generative

listen

this way you'll see how the user describes the problem/solution, hear them thinking in their terms

Much better in person

Eables observing behavior

Define your goals

Understand who to talk to

What do you need to observe

What do you hope to find out

Articulate your hypothesis

Identify your own believes

Map the topics you want to discuss

topic map

helps you know what would you talk about

Prompts rather than set questions

Have a softball question

to make the person feel more comfortable

neutralize their interupt-defense mechanism

Acive listening

Receive

Appreciate

Summarize

Ask

Ask open questions - don't lead

Wh questions, not yes/no questions

To keep people talking

"tell me more"

"what else"

"tell me a story about it"

"help me understand that"

Echoing & rephrasing

like Eliza

repeat the last word, to get more elaboration

summarize what they said

maintain ping-pong dialog

Conversational disequilibrium

balance the questions & answers

How to deal with difficult people

quite one

sometimes because they're very focussed on something

try ask questions that will trigger them to elaborate

bored one

usually when giving incentive, condition incentive on achieving goal

better stop early

chatty one

need keep the conversation focussed, That's really ineresting, thanks for telling me about it. To continue our.., Can I interrupt you? Sorry, I was curious..

Do's & Don'ts

Do

Be the learner not the expert

Ask naiive questions

Ask for specific stories

Allow people time to think

Listen, actively

Take notes or record, If you're a bad multi-tasker, maybe have someone else that will take notes, There's a pen that also records audio, Have interns, example, ask them to mark when the person expresses emotions